A U.S. Navy chief who wanted the internet so she and other enlisted officers could scroll social media, check sports scores and watch movies while deployed had an unauthorized Starlink satellite dish installed on a warship and lied to her commanding officer to keep it secret, according to investigators.
Internet access is restricted while a ship is underway to maintain bandwidth for military operations and to protect against cybersecurity threats.
The Navy quietly relieved Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, in August or September 2023, and released information on parts of the investigation this week.
Here’s a more in-depth article, with pictures.
The picture you want to see
Heh.
Why the F were they broadcasting the SSID on a “secret” wifi network? That’s just asking to get caught. If they had hidden the SSID most people would never have known about it.
You’re expecting intelligence and competence from these people? The ones who thought it would be a good idea to violate a half dozen regulations to even install it in the first place?
You can still see a WiFi network (and tell that it is unique from others) even when it’s not broadcasting SSID. It’s just one less piece of information available when someone is trying to access it.
Security through obscurity isn’t security, but it’ll keep neighborhood kids from trying to guess the password from across the street. On a warship? They’d have still seen it.
Yes but not as blatant as STINKY
Everyone with a smartphone would see STINKY and immediately get suspicious, while only techs would have noticed the hidden network and investigated on that
Extra fun is that the head chief never gave anyone else the password. She logged into each of the other chiefs devices.
She could have 100% also typed in the ssid at the time. It would have taken almost no extra effort.
You can view WiFi passwords for saved networks on pretty much every OS. There’s no reason to be secretive about entering WiFi passwords, at least to the people whose devices you’re entering the password on.
She should have used eap-tls…
You think someone stupid enough to make all the above mistakes would be savvy enough to build PKI and a RADIUS server? You’re giving her too much credit.